Sunday February 12, 2017

I guess this should have gone along with that Cannonlake post I made earlier, but It sounds like Intel’s three-stage "Process-Architecture-Optimization" is already out. Okay, let’s play marketing departmentآ—what should we call the fourth step? And does this basically mean that 10nm yields aren’t as good as Intel had hoped?

In a somewhat confusing move, this week Intel confirmed that its next 8th generation Core processors would remain on the 14nm node, despite previously saying that it would have 10nm ready to go later this year. Speaking at its annual investor day in California, Intel spoke about its plans for 8th gen, adding that it would be sticking with 14nm for its mainline CPUs for the fourth year in a row. Earlier this year we saw the launch of Kaby Lake, which was the ‘Optimization’ step in Intel’s new three-stage ‘Process-Architecture-Optimization’ release schedule, which replaced the old Tick-Tock cycle last year. By returning to 14nm for 8th generation, it seems that a fourth step is being added to Intel’s cycle.